23 ideas
| 8093 | Seek wisdom rather than truth; it is easier [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
| A reaction: A nice challenge to the traditional goal of philosophy. The idea that we should 'seek truth' only seems to have emerged during the Reformation. The Greeks may well never have dreamed of such a thing. |
| 8095 | We must think with our entire body and soul [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body and soul. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1798) | |
| A reaction: Not just that thinking must be a whole-hearted activity, but that the very contents of our thinking will be better if it arises out of being a physical creature, and not just a disembodied reasoner. Maybe the bowels are not needed to analyse set theory. |
| 8107 | The love of certainty holds us back in metaphysics [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: What stops or holds us back in metaphysics is a love of certainty. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1814) | |
| A reaction: This is a prominent truth from the age of Descartes, but may have diminished in the twenty-first century. The very best metaphysicians (e.g. Aristotle and Lewis) always end in a trail of dots when things become unsure. |
| 8099 | The truths of reason instruct, but they do not illuminate [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: There are truths that instruct, perhaps, but they do not illuminate. In this class are all the truths of reasoning. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: A rather romantic view, which strikes me as false. An inspiring truth can suddenly collapse when you see why it must be false. Equally a line of reasoning can lead to a truth which need becomes an illumination. |
| 8098 | Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: Presumably sceptics about the existence of objective truth must also be sceptical about the possibility of such a God. I think Joubert is close to the nature of truth here. It is a remote and barely imaginable ideal. |
| 8101 | To know is to see inside oneself [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: To know: it is to see inside oneself. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: Extreme internalism about justification! Personally I am becoming convinced that 'know' (unlike 'believe' and 'true') is an entirely social concept. Fools spend a lot of time instrospecting; wise people ask around, and check in books. |
| 8094 | The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1797) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of the imagination, I love this one. I suspect that imagination, which was marginalised by Descartes, is actually the single most important aspect of thought (in slugs as well as humans). Abstraction requires imagination. |
| 8103 | A thought is as real as a cannon ball [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: A thought is a thing as real as a cannon ball. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
| A reaction: Nice. The realisation of a thought can strike someone as if they have been assaulted, and hearing some remarks can be as bad as being stabbed. That is quite apart from political consequences. Joubert is good on the physicality of thinking. |
| 8100 | Where does the bird's idea of a nest come from? [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from? | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a very striking example in support of innate ideas. Most animal behaviour can be explained as responses to stimuli, but the bird seems to hold a model in its mind while it collects its materials. |
| 7270 | Historical interpretation aims to recapture the author's view of the work [Croce] |
| Full Idea: Historical interpretation enables us to see a work of art as its author saw it in the moment of production. | |
| From: Benedetto Croce (Aesthetic as Science of Expression [1902], §II), quoted by W Wimsatt/W Beardsley - The Intentional Fallacy §II | |
| A reaction: Wimsatt and Beardsley quote this as the romantic antithesis of their own view, but there is a blurring between understanding a work and judging. Personally I consider intentions essential for understanding, and valuable for judgement. |
| 8096 | He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: He gives his body up to pleasure, but not his soul. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1799) | |
| A reaction: A rather crucial distinction in the world of hedonism. There seems something sincere about someone who pursues pleasure body and soul, and something fractured about the pursuit of pleasure without real commitment. The split seems possible. |
| 8104 | What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them? | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1802) | |
| A reaction: A lovely test question for aspiring young hedonists! It doesn't follow at all that we will despise past pleasures. The judgement may be utilitarian - that we regret the pleasures that harmed others, but love the harmless ones. Shame is social. |
| 22717 | Self-interest can fairly divide a cake; first person cuts, second person chooses [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: To fairly divide a cake between two children, the first divides it and the second chooses. …Even division is best, as it anticipates the second child will take the largest piece. Fairness is enforced by the children's self-interests. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 03 'Cake') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is introduced as the basic principle of game theory. There is an online video of two cats sharing a dish of milk; each one drinks a bit, then pushes the dish to the other one. I'm sure two children could manage that. |
| 22718 | Formal game theory is about maximising or minimising numbers in tables [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: At the most abstract level, game theory is about tables with numbers in them - numbers that entities are are efficiently acting to maximise or minimise. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 03 'Curve') | |
| A reaction: A brilliant idea. The question is the extent to which real life conforms to the numberical tables. The assumption that everyone is entirely self-seeking is blatantly false. Numbers like money have diminishing marginal utility. |
| 22719 | The minimax theorem says a perfect game of opposed people always has a rational solution [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: The minimax theorem says that there is always a rational solution to a precisely defined conflict between two people whose interests are completely opposite. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 03 'Minimax') | |
| A reaction: This is Von Neumann's founding theorem of game theory. It concerns maximising minimums, and minimising maximums. Crucially, I would say that it virtually never occurs that two people have completely opposite interests. There is a common good. |
| 22720 | Two prisoners get the best result by being loyal, not by selfish betrayal [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: Prisoners A and B can support or betray one another. If both support, they each get 1 year in prison. If one betrays, the betrayer gets 0 and the betrayed gets 3. If they both betray they get 2 each. The common good is to support each other. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 06 'Tucker's') | |
| A reaction: [by Albert Tucker, highly compressed] The classic Prisoner's Dilemma. It is artificial, but demonstrates that selfish behaviour gets a bad result (total of four years imprisonment), but the common good gets only two years. Every child should study this! |
| 22721 | The tragedy in prisoner's dilemma is when two 'nice' players misread each other [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: The tragedy is when two 'nice' players defect because they misread the other's intentions. The puzzle of the prisoner's dilemma is how such good intentions pave the road to hell. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 11 'Howard's') | |
| A reaction: I really wish these simple ideas were better known. They more or less encapsulate the tragedy of the human race, with its inability to prioritise the common good. |
| 22722 | TIT FOR TAT says cooperate at first, then do what the other player does [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: The successful TIT FOR TAT strategy (for the iterated prisoner's dilemma) says cooperate on the first round, then do whatever the other player did in the previous round. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 12 'TIT') | |
| A reaction: There are also the tougher TWO TITS FOR A TAT, and the more forgiving TIT FOR TWO TATS. The one-for-one seems to be the main winner, and is commonly seen in animal life (apparently). I recommend this to school teachers. |
| 22723 | Do unto others as you would have them do unto you - or else! [Poundstone] |
| Full Idea: TIT FOR TAT threatens 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you - or else!'. | |
| From: William Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma [1992], 12 'TIT') | |
| A reaction: Essentially human happiness arises if we are all nice, but also stand up firmly for ourselves. 'Doormats' (nice all the time) get exploited. TIT FOR TAT is weak, because it doesn't exploit people who don't respond at all. |
| 8097 | Virtue is hard if we are scorned; we need support [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: It would be difficult to be scorned and to live virtuously. We have need of support. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1800) | |
| A reaction: He seems to have hit on what I take to be one of the keys to Aristotle: that virtue is a social matter, requiring both upbringing and a healthy culture. But we can help to create that culture, as well as benefiting from it. |
| 8106 | In raising a child we must think of his old age [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: In raising a child we must think of his old age. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1809) | |
| A reaction: Very nice, and Aristotle would approve. If educators think much about the future, it rarely extends before the child's first job. We should be preparing good grand-parents, as well as parents and employees. Educate for retirement! |
| 8105 | We can't exactly conceive virtue without the idea of God [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: If we exclude the idea of God, it is impossible to have an exact idea of virtue. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1808) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that an 'exact' idea is impossible even with an idea of God. This is an interesting defence of the importance of God in moral thinking, but it only requires the concept of a supreme being, and not belief. |
| 8102 | We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love [Joubert] |
| Full Idea: We cannot speak against Christianity without anger, or speak for it without love. | |
| From: Joseph Joubert (Notebooks [1800], 1801) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be rather true at the present time, when a wave of anti-religious books is sweeping through our culture. Presumably this remark used to be true of ancient paganism, but it died away. Christianity, though, is very personal. |